Community Care Cooperative launches $5 million campaign to boost telehealth for health centers fighting COVID-19

Local community Care Cooperative, the accountable treatment business that developments group-based mostly treatment for MassHealth customers through its community of 19 well being centers all through Massachusetts, has introduced a $5 million marketing campaign to drastically improve telehealth capability in group well being centers statewide.

C3 stated that telehealth ability is necessary in get to far better battle the COVID-19 pandemic – and far better serve well being centre clients when the pandemic is above.

C3 has also been awarded grants from the Federal Communications Commission’s Wireline Levels of competition Bureau, men and women and charitable foundations totaling about $two.8 million to progress telehealth in Massachusetts in response to the coronavirus.

Basis and personal assist arrives from the DentaQuest Partnership for Oral Wellness Development, the Paul and Phyllis Fireman Charitable Basis, the Landry Household Basis, the Klarman Household Basis, and Barbara and Amos Hostetter. Along with a direct grant from the Patrick J. McGovern Basis declared before this thirty day period, basis and personal assist helps make up $1,850,000 of the $two.8 million total.

What’s THE Effect?

The grants are to be used to battle COVID-19 by escalating telehealth capability through assist of the Massachusetts FQHC Telehealth Consortium, which is created up of thirty group well being centers all through the point out, like the 19 well being centers that comprise C3. The funding will allow the consortium to incorporate additional well being centers to the telehealth exertion to meet escalating demand.

Through the marketing campaign, C3 will assist telehealth capability, teaching and infrastructure at group well being centers statewide, focusing on hardware this sort of as laptops, cameras and headsets assist for well being centre IT departments distant-monitoring equipment this sort of as scales, blood stress cuffs and glucose screens a “lending library” of affected individual-facet phones and tablets dwelling phlebotomy project management and acquiring a lengthy-term technique for telehealth that assesses facilitators and addresses boundaries to implementation.

The DentaQuest Partnership grant permits C3 to incorporate a telehealth dentistry part to its telehealth offerings, and to develop an oral well being model that moves from method-based mostly, payment-for-support dentistry to preventative effectively treatment.

THE Greater Development

In March, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Products and services quickly taken out regulatory requirements to give hospitals better skill to deal with an influx of clients with COVID-19 even though they also deal with those people in have to have of other styles of treatment.

Products and services ordinarily supplied by hospitals this sort of as cancer methods, trauma surgeries and other critical surgeries can be supplied at non-healthcare facility web pages, even though hospitals can bill for the services supplied outside the house of their 4 walls. Ambulatory surgical centers will get reimbursement at the healthcare facility price.

While making these improvements long term will demanded an act of Congress, it may well be moved to motion owing to telehealth’s escalating attractiveness and legitimacy as a treatment model.

ON THE Report

“With the social distancing demanded to battle COVID-19, telehealth has turn out to be an complete necessity in furnishing most important and dental treatment, and we urgently have to have to increase that access to the most vulnerable of Massachusetts’ inhabitants,” stated Christina Severin, president and CEO of C3. “With the generous assist we are announcing today, we arrive nearer to our $5 million marketing campaign aim and drastically improve our capability to assistance our group well being centers to far better serve the requires of the commonwealth’s Medicaid clients.”

“Practically nothing really should stand in the way of clients finding critical treatment,” stated Beth Klarman, president and trustee of the Klarman Household Basis. “Which is why we are very pleased to assistance scale transformative tools – like telehealth – that increase access to treatment, like behavioral well being. We hope these improvements condition healthcare’s ‘new ordinary.'”

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